by James Moore
Already aged 30, his string of crimes appears to have begun in December 1978 after he met teenager Stephen Holmes in an Irish pub near his home called The Cricklewood Arms. Nilsen, who had been drinking heavily, invited Stephen, who was on his way home from a rock concert, to visit his home. The next morning he strangled the unfortunate youngster and drowned him in a bucket. Stephen’s body was then stored under the floorboards of Nilsen’s flat in Melrose Avenue for eight months before he burned the remains in his back garden.
Nilsen later said, ‘I was desperate for company, even if it was only a body.’ And he was soon seeking out more men to lure into his suburban web. In late 1979 he headed to The Salisbury, a smart pub with a long history in Covent Garden. It had been known as a place for homosexual men to meet since Oscar Wilde’s time. There he met a student called Andrew Ho, from Hong Kong, and brought him back to Melrose Avenue. Nilsen attempted to put a tie around Andrew’s neck but Ho escaped his clutches and fled from the property. He went straight to the police to report the attack. Although police did go on to interview Nilsen, the case went no further as 19-year-old Ho eventually decided not to press charges.
Despite this close call, Nilsen was undeterred. A couple of months later he met a 23-year-old Canadian tourist called Kenneth Ockendon in The Princess Louise, a pub in High Holborn. After offering to show Kenneth the sights of London, the pair left the pub and, after the tour, went back to Nilsen’s flat to listen to music. Kenneth picked up a pair of headphones and was listening to a record when Nilsen put a flex round his neck and strangled him, then finished him off by drowning him in the bath.
Over the next two years there were many more victims – with The Golden Lion a favourite hunting ground. Nilsen’s killing frenzy saw him murder homeless man Martyn Duffey, 16, Billy Sutherland, 26 and Malcolm Barlow, 24, as well as a string of other unidentified men. After their deaths Nilsen’s victims were often bathed and dressed too, in a weird ritual which would later earn Nilsen the ironic nickname of the ‘Kindly Killer’. Nilsen would keep the bodies, sometimes for months, storing them under the floorboards and having sex with the corpses before chopping them up.
In November 1980 there was another escapee, a barman called Douglas Stewart. But when he reported an attack by Nilsen to the police, officers appear to have accepted Nilsen’s suggestion that it was a ‘lover’s tiff’.
By October 1981, Nilsen was running out of storage space for the bodies of his victims at his Melrose Avenue flat and neighbours were beginning to complain about a strange smell. He burned the remaining corpses he had kept in a garden bonfire and moved to another address, this time an attic flat in Cranley Gardens, Muswell Hill.
But his lust for more corpses showed no signs of waning. In March 1982, the year after his failed attempt to kill Paul Nobbs, he went to The Salisbury to seek out a new victim. He chose John Howlett, a man who claimed to be an ex Grenadier Guard. Finding the service in the pub slow, the pair left and went to an off-licence and then back to Cranley Gardens, where they watched television whilst drinking. When John nodded off he was strangled. Nilsen then made sure he was dead by holding Howlett’s head under the water for five minutes. He went on to dismember Howlett’s body, hiding parts around the house and flushing others down the toilet.
The Salisbury in St Martin’s Lane, London – one of the pubs frequented by serial killer Dennis Nilsen. (© James Moore)
In May of the same year, Nilsen met Carl Stottor who worked as a drag queen, Khara Le Fox, in a pub called The Black Cap in Camden. Carl was in a vulnerable state, having just come out of a turbulent relationship, and Nilsen comforted him as he poured his heart out over a lager and lime. In a taxi back to Nilsen’s flat they held hands. That night Nilsen tried to strangle and drown Stottor but in the end, for some reason, let him go.
Two more men, Graham Allen, 27, and Stephen Sinclair, 20, would end up dead at Nilsen’s hands before his crimes were finally uncovered. Nilsen’s macabre method of disposal for his victims’ bodies was to be his undoing. In February 1983, a plumber was called in by a neighbour to unblock a drain and found rotting human flesh. Police were called and when, on 9 February, they challenged Nilsen at his home, he finally admitted that there were human remains still in the flat. Detectives found them concealed in bin bags, including the partly-boiled head of Sinclair. Once arrested, Nilsen calmly told police that there he was responsible for a total of fifteen deaths. In November 1983, after a trial at the Old Bailey, Nilsen was convicted of six murders and two attempted murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is still in prison.
LOCATIONS: The Golden Lion, No. 51 Dean Street, London W1D 5BH, 020 7434 0661; The Salisbury, No. 90 St Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden, 020 7836 5863, www.taylor-walker.co.uk; The Princess Louise, No. 208 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7EP, 020 7405 8816, princesslouisepub.co.uk; The Black Cap, No. 171 Camden High Street, London, NW1 7JY, 020 7485 0538, www.theblackcap.com
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